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In Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s, the newly-powerful socialists promoted equal access to education for men and women. The reunification of North and South Vietnam after the Vietnam war, in 1976, also allowed women to take on leadership roles in politics. One author said that Vietnam during the 1980s was “a place where, after exhausting work and furious struggle, women can be confident that they travel the path which will some day arrive at their liberation.” However, some historians have argued that women’s advocates in Vietnam “have been weakened in the postreunification era due in part to the implementation of free market reforms in a nondemocratic political context.”

The resource constraints were detrimnental to women’s rights, as was the political atmosphere after the war. The new state implemented free market economics but political participation was not expanded. The tight political atmosphere and resource-constraints weakened the Vietnam Women’s Union, which was accustomed to speaking on behalf of women under Vietnam’s single-party rule. After the war was over, it was no longer seen as a crucial organization by the government. Political reunification also resulted in the end of the quota system and the subsequent decrease in women in the National Assembly. There was also an increase in occupational segregation as women returned to more roles within the home and men returned from the war. Free-market policies known as the Doi moi put female-headed households in rural areas at a disadvantage by limiting their access to credit.